Chapter 43

OF THE CITY OF CHINGHIANFU.

Chinghianfu is a city of Manzi. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan, and have paper-money, and live by handicrafts and trade. They have plenty of silk, from which they make sundry kinds of stuffs of silk and gold. There are great and wealthy merchants in the place; plenty of game is to be had, and of all kinds of victual.

There are in this city two churches of Nestorian Christians which were established in the year of our Lord 1278; and I will tell you how that happened. You see, in the year just named, the Great Kaan sent a Baron of his whose name was MAR SARGHIS, a Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three years. And during the three years that he abode there he caused these two Christian churches to be built, and since then there they are. But before his time there was no church, neither were there any Christians.{1}

NOTE 1.—CHIN-KIANG FU retains its name unchanged. It is one which became well known in the war of 1842. On its capture on the 21st July in that year, the heroic Manchu commandant seated himself among his records and then set fire to the building, making it his funeral pyre. The city was totally destroyed in the T’ai-P’ing wars, but is rapidly recovering its position as a place of native commerce.

[Chên-kiang, “a name which may be translated ‘River Guard,’ stands at the point where the Grand Canal is brought to a junction with the waters of the Yang-tzŭ when the channel of the river proper begins to expand into an extensive tidal estuary.” (_Treaty Ports of China_, p. 421.) It was declared open to foreign trade by the Treaty of Tien-Tsin in 1858.—H. C.]

_Mar Sarghis_ (or Dominus Sergius) appears to have been a common name among Armenian and other Oriental Christians. As Pauthier mentions, this very name is one of the names of Nestorian priests inscribed in Syriac on the celebrated monument of Si-ngan fu.

[In the description of Chin-kiang quoted by the Archimandrite Palladius (see vol. i. p. 187, note 3), a Christian monastery or temple is mentioned: “The temple _Ta-hing-kuo-sze_ stands in Chin-kiang fu, in the quarter called _Kia-t’ao h’eang_. It was built in the 18th year of _Chi-yuen_ (A.D. 1281) by the _Sub-darugachi, Sie-li-ki-sze_ (Sergius). _Liang Siang_, the teacher in the Confucian school, wrote a commemorative inscription for him.” From this document we see that “_Sie-mi-sze-hien_ (Samarcand) is distant from China 100,000 li (probably a mistake for 10,000) to the north-west. It is a country where the religion of the _Ye-li-k’o-wen_ dominates.... The founder of the religion was called _Ma-rh Ye-li-ya_. He lived and worked miracles a thousand five hundred years ago. _Ma Sie-li-ki-sze_ (Mar Sergius) is a follower of him.” (_Chinese Recorder_, VI. p. 108).—H. C.]

From this second mention of _three years_ as a term of government, we may probably gather that this was the usual period for the tenure of such office. (_Mid. Kingd._, I. 86; _Cathay_, p. xciii.)